FOG Bighorn Sheep hunt

Published 2:28 pm Monday, September 23, 2019

Tom Manning won a once-in-a-lifetime lottery.

Twice.

In consecutive years.

Manning, who lives in Boise, might be the luckiest bighorn sheep hunter in the West.

In 2018 he drew a tag to hunt Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep in Idaho’s Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness.

It was the only such tag he’ll ever get.

Idaho allows hunters to draw only one Rocky Mountain bighorn tag — ever.

But Oregon is even more restrictive.

In Idaho, hunters who buck the odds can draw a single tag for each of the two bighorn species in the state — Rocky Mountain and California (desert).

Oregon also has populations of both bighorn species, but hunters fortunate enough to get a tag for, say, a Rocky Mountain bighorn can’t later draw one for a California bighorn hunt.

Manning is in that group now.

But he doesn’t feel shortchanged.

Not after bagging what appears to be the biggest trophy bighorn ram from Baker County’s Lookout Mountain unit.

Manning, a 53-year-old surgeon, needs but a single word to describe the hunt that culminated, on Sept. 9, with his taking the ram from just under 300 yards with his .300 Norma Magnum.

“Spectacular.”

Which isn’t to imply that Manning doesn’t have more to say about his first experience hunting big game in Oregon.

At first he figured he’d try to get some chukar in the steep slopes above Brownlee Reservoir that he’s seen for years while hunting just across the water in Idaho.

But while buying his Oregon hunting license, Manning decided to apply for several big game tags as well — including the lone nonresident tag for a Rocky Mountain bighorn ram in the Lookout Mountain unit in eastern Baker County.

“I knew the odds were low, but you just hope for the best,” Manning said.

Although 2019 statistics aren’t available, in 2018 there were 788 non-Oregonians vying for that one tag.

Manning’s reaction, when he called up his draw results online last summer, was predictable.

“Obviously very surprised,” he said.

With the season starting Sept. 7, Manning drove to Oregon in August to scout the terrain. He returned on Sept. 5 for more reconnaissance.

He also hired guides Dan Blankenship and Todd Longgood of Sheep Mountain Outfitters.

On Sunday, Sept. 8, the second day of the season, Manning said he spotted the ram he ended up shooting.

But it was too late in the day to start a stalk.

The next day Manning and his guides formulated a plan to approach the area where they had seen the ram.

The stalk was challenging, he said, in part because the ram was in a high basin with considerable cover, including timber.

But eventually Manning reached a spot above the ram.

“It was actually kind of anticlimactic when the ram showed himself,” he said.

The ram’s green score — the official measurement can’t happen until at least 60 days after the hunt — was 194 6/8, Manning said.

That would rank his ram as the biggest ever taken in the Lookout Mountain unit. The current record-holder, taken by Shelby L. Miller in 2012, measured 193 0/8.

If Manning’s ram maintains its position it would rank seventh on Oregon’s list for Rocky Mountain bighorns.

The top six were all taken in Wallowa County. At the head of the list, measuring 203 5/8, is the ram that David Prock killed in 2000.

Manning said he was impressed by the bighorn herd in the Lookout Mountain unit. Sheep were extirpated from that area around the middle of the 20th century, but the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife restored the animals with a series of releases of bighorns, which were trapped outside Oregon, in the early 1990s.

“I think it’s great habitat,” he said. “That unit just has very special genetics. It’s a very healthy sheep herd.”

Manning said rams in Lookout Mountain are bigger than the ones he’s accustomed to seeing in Idaho.

The record books for the two states illustrate his point — the top Rocky Mountain ram on Idaho’s list scored 197 7/8.

“For me it was a super special hunt,” Manning said of his time in Oregon. “I think the whole thing is a tribute to the game management by the state of Oregon. I was just the lucky guy who drew the tag.”